Book Art

As part of the artist’s exhibition projects the print process has been utilised to create hand made books associated with the landscape subject matter:

Equinox

Artists book made for the ‘Mountain Arts Festival’ Reghed Centre Cumbria 2016

This handmade book and case contains text and images drawn in ink and bleach documenting a journey around Chew Valley, a reservoir in the Dark Peak National Park, in the last hour of daylight on the Spring Equinox 2016.

This piece of work is part of a current project entitled ‘Northern Stones and Peat Smoke’, a series of images based upon landscape sites in the north of England and Scotland which have also been described in contemporary literature and poetry.

The Horizons ring me like faggots
Tilted and desperate, and always unstable.
Touched by a match, they might warm me,
And their fine lines singe
The air to orange

an extract from Wuthering Heights – Sylvia Plath

North Hush

This artists book contains woodcut images drawn at the site of an abandoned lead mine in Swaledale. The artist was fascinated by the spoil heaps within the landscape and how every piece of mined rock had been handled and reshaped (bowsed), to eventually redefine the topography of the daleside and high moor.

At the peak of the lead mining industry in 1851 the parish of Melbeck which includes ‘North hush’ and Gunnerside had a population of 1661.
In 1882 the price of lead fell and mining virtually ceased, by 1981 the population had diminished to 282.
The ‘dressing floors’ were platforms of spoil near the smelting houses on which the newly mined ore was broken into small pieces.

The monocolour woodcut prints from the books are also presented in a coloured version framed with the following text:

Dressing Floors

Under the fold of Surrender MossWhispering hushes mourn a shrouded wasteLayed out in rows along rake and levelA pale karst morgue

In the short daylight of winterWater runs like timeAcross the silent dressing floors

Alba And Arisaig

Two concertina books containing small woodcut images of the West coast of Scotland, created after an expedition to Rum in 2017, handmade in signed editions of 5.